A patent application for a thesis or in a foreign language will be possible to be filed (News Letter No. 206)

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KH

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2010-12-15

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1. A patent application for a thesis or in a foreign language will be possible to be filed

- The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO, Commissioner: Soo-won LEE) held a public hearing for a revised bill of the Patent Law reflecting the contents of the Patent Law Treaty

KIPO held a public hearing regarding a revised bill of the Patent Law. This revised bill of the Patent Law reflects the contents of the Patent Law Treaty (PLT) aiming at the unification and simplification of the patent system of each country.

The PLT was agreed to in 2000 and came into force in 2005. At present, 27 countries including England, France, Australia and Russia, among others, have joined the PLT. This revised bill of the Patent Law reflecting the PLT includes the contents of greatly liberalizing the filing format, making possible to file a patent application in a thesis or a foreign language format in the future. For the procedural convenience of an applicant, an opportunity of acquiring a patent is expanded to recover a right that may lapse by a failure of meeting a filing deadline.

Further, in this revised bill of the Patent Law, as a part of ‘making laws to be easily understood’, legal terms in difficult Chinese characters have been changed into Korean wording, and long and complicated sentences have been rewritten so as to be concise and clear. In addition, the revised bill of the Patent Law reflects improvements according to the patent environment changes and the demands for revision of the Patent Law as occurred in a service operating process.

The public hearing is expected to enhance the understanding of the people regarding the direction of promoting the revision of the Patent Law as performed with the contents to reflect the PLT, make the laws to be easily understood and improve the patent systems. It is also expected to collect various opinions from applicants, agents, academia and so on.

2. KIPO held a presentation meeting of Business Model (BM) Patents in the banking sector

KIPO and the Korea Federation of Banks (KFB) jointly held a ‘presentation meeting of BM Patents in the banking sector’ in the conference room of KFB, to stimulate the filing of patent applications in the banking industry and to enhance the ability to cope with patent disputes.

Applications for BM patents in the banking sector were filed from 2000 during the venture fever and the development of IT technology, such as Internet, in the beginning of 2000s. About 500 patent applications per year have been filed since 2007.

In the presentation meeting, the following items were presented: △ the recent trends in the filing of BM patent applications in the banking sector△ the patent applications of the banks leading BM patents and strategies of using the patent applications △ the introduction of BM patent dispute cases in the banking field, and the plan to strengthen the ability of creating and utilizing the BM patents in the banking industry.

3. A dispute between the Japanese company, Canon, and the Korean cartridge recycling industry becomes wider

Korean printer recycling industry has filed a counteraction response against Japanese company, Canon.

In June this year, Canon sued Korean photosensitive drum industry for an unfair trade action according to a patent infringement. Thereupon, the Korean industry brought a suit, arguing that Canon’s patent should be originally invalidated. The trial for invalidation of a patent was received at the Patent Court of Korea in August this year, and the examination thereof is in process. The major photosensitive drum manufactures including BaikSan OPC, AlphaChem, Cems, and NeoPhotocon have jointly taken part in the trial.

The key of the trial is that, since Canon’s patent relates to a triangle gear connecting a photosensitive drum inside a printer cartridge, it is impossible to mount the photosensitive drum to the cartridge without the triangle gear. Korean companies have provided the triangle gears upon providing the photosensitive drums and therefore a dispute with Canon happened.

Canon has brought suits against Korean recycling industry since 2001. Canon filed trials for inhibiting infringement of a patent right relating the triangle gear and trials for claiming damages against Samsung Electric Co., Ltd. which produces a toner cartridge which is the same as a patented product of Canon in August 2001 and against Park & OPC which took over a manufacturing plant from Samsung Electric in May 2002. Canon won in both of the original trials and the second trials. As the Supreme Court’s final judgment of confirming the original verdict was made in 2006, Canon were paid by 320,000,000 Korea Won from Samsung Electric and by 1,820,000,000 Korea Won from Park & OPC.

Since winning the trial, Canon is arguing the unfair trade action, among others, and expanding the width of the attack. Against this, the Korean industry is standing against recycling.

4. Samsung Electronic agreed with use of a patent with Intellectual Ventures (IV)

On November 19, 2010, Samsung Electronics announced that they concluded a patent license agreement with IV, a US patent licensing company. According to the agreement, Samsung Electronics can use broadly, throughout the whole business area, the patent owned by IV if need.

Samsung Electronics expects to reduce risk relating to patents, which may occur in the future as well as at present, by strengthening the company’s patent portfolios through this agreement.

Since 2005, Samsung Electronics declared the management focused on patents and has continued the cultivation of patent expert human resources and the R&D investment.

As a result, Samsung Electronics has kept its 1st place in the Korean patent registrations ranking and its 2nd place in the US patent registrations ranking since 2006.